Papias' Logia: Scarlet by Stephen Lawhead

Monday, March 24, 2008

Scarlet by Stephen Lawhead

I finished the book "Scarlet" by Stepehen Lawhead last week. Pretty good read, all in all.

I read the first book "Hood" a few months back, and then put a library hold on the second book. I had to wait a few months to get "Scarlet", the second in the "Robin Hood" triology that he is writing. It follows the story of Will Scarlet, from an interesting perspective: dictating to a scribe while he is in prison. He describes how he came to find Bran and joined him, to how he got captured and then escaped. I won't say more than that. I could have finished this book alot faster than I did - but it's such a good read - I had to put it down to just soak in some of the word pictures and ambiance. Near the end, I felt like he rushed to the conclusion, and left the reader with a big time cliffhanger. Let's just say that "someone's gonna die..."

The next and final book, "Tuck", is supposed to come out next year. I am not sure I can wait for the library system next year - I might have to purchase the set!

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About my namesake...

Papias wrote in the first half of the second century and was one of the early leaders of the Christian church. Church historian Eusebius calls him the "Bishop of Hierapolis" (modern Pamukkale, Turkey) which is 22 kilometers from Laodicea near Colossae (see Colossians 4:13).

His “Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord” (his word for "sayings" is "logia") in five books, would have been a prime early authority in the exegesis of the sayings of Jesus. His treatise, however, has utterly disappeared, and is known only through fragments quoted by later writers, with approval by Irenaeus in "Against Heresies", and later with scorn by Eusebius of Caesarea in "Ecclesiastical History."

Eusebius calls Papias "a man of small mental capacity" (Hist. Eccl. 3.39.13), who mistook the figurative language of apostolic traditions. Whether this was so is difficult to judge without the text available; it is thought that perhaps Eusebius objected to Papias' premillenialism (chiliasm), which by the fourth century had been supplanted by the common church doctrine of amillennialism.

It was thought that Papias was "a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, a man of old time." According to another tradition, Papias shared in the martyrdom of Polycarp, (c. AD 155). Eusebius, who places him with Clement and Ignatius under the reign of Trajan, suggests that he wrote about AD 115. In all likelihood, he wrote his treatise in the first quarter of the second century. What remains today are only fragments of his Treatise quoted in the writings of Irenaeus and Eusebius.